In baseball terms, the long-awaited sale of the Texas Rangers moved one step closer to home Monday as the Major League Baseball franchise filed for
bankruptcy in Fort Worth in a bid to restart a stalled $575 million sale.

Earlier this month Lowe noted that the continued deadlock
with creditors over the Rangers sale could lead MLB commissioner Bud Selig to
invoke the league's "best interests" rule to seize the team and
invalidate loans held by creditors. The Chapter 11 filing and plan of reorganization by the Rangers is designed to break the four-month
stalemate, although a U.S. trustee has disagreed with the team's labeling of the plan as "prepackaged." (As expected, creditors are concerned about the voluntary filing by the team.)

A letter dated May 24, 2010, from Selig to Hicks attached to the team's bankruptcy filing states that Selig authorized the
Rangers to pursue Chapter 11 as a means of expediting a sale. Copied on the letter are current MLB executives Robert DuPuy, John McHale, Jr., Jonathan
Mariner, and Thomas Ostertag. (DuPuy, a former Foley & Lardner partner, is
the league's president and COO, while Ostertag serves as general counsel.)

In addition to Braza, the Greenberg/Ryan group has turned to Foley & Lardner bankruptcy partner Michael
Small and bankruptcy litigation partner Robert Simon from Fort Worth's Barlow
Garsek & Simon for counsel.

Bankruptcy court records show that Weil received
more than $7.7 million in fees in the year prior to the Chapter 11 filing, roughly $5.7
million of which was related to the sale of the team. Partners and counsel are
billing between $725 and $990 per hour, while associates are being paid between $395 and $685.

Fort Worth bankruptcy boutique Forshey Prostok is serving
as conflicts counsel to the debtor. The firm has not yet submitted billing
statements with the bankruptcy court.

The Rangers will be able to continue operations while in
Chapter 11. Last year the Chicago Cubs filed for bankruptcy as part of the
team's $845 million sale by bankrupt parent Tribune. (As reported by The Am Law
Daily, Paul Weiss and Foley & Lardner also advised clients in the sales
process for the Cubs.)

According to a list of unsecured creditors in
the Rangers bankruptcy, the team owes millions in deferred compensation to several current and former players. Alex Rodriguez tops the list at nearly $25 million, followed by lesser sums for Kevin Millwood ($12.9
million), Michael Young ($3.9 million), Vicente Padilla ($1.7 million), Mickey
"Froot Loops" Tettleton ($1.4 million), and Mark McLemore ($970,000).

MLBPA executive director Michael Weiner, a former general
counsel for the union, told The Associated Press that he has "been assured that
all contractual commitments to players will be honored in full."

Jack Kinzie, chair of the bankruptcy and insolvency
practice at Baker Botts in Dallas, is advising the Major League Baseball
Players Association along with associates C. Luckey McDowell and Ian Roberts.
Partners Richard Seltzer, Babette Ceccotti, and Bruce Levine from New York
labor firm Cohen, Weiss and Simon are also representing the union.

LeBron's Legal Issues

With the clock ticking on where LeBron James will play
basketball next year, the blogosphere was abuzz last week over a salacious online report linking the Cleveland Cavaliers's early exit from the playoffs to a personal rift between James and one of his teammates.

In other legal-centric LeBron news, Forbes speculated that the New York Knicks might be able to use its
publicly traded MSG stock to land the soon-to-be free agent. Alas, it turns out that such a ploy would be against
NBA rules--bad news for The Am Law Daily's woebegone Knicks-fan contingent.

-- Former baseball star Bobby Bonilla has hired Day Pitney litigation partner Ernest Mattei for a dispute over marital assets following Bonilla's divorce last year, the Greenwich Time reports. Mattei told the paper that Bobby Bo's ex-wife, Migdalia, should feel free to take what she wants because most of his client's investments are worthless.